by Eric Steenstra
The 2012 election campaign is in full swing and President Obama’s campaign is hard at work raising money to fund his reelection effort. The campaign even has an online store featuring a wide variety of items for sale. One of the items offered is a beautiful hemp and organic cotton scarf made by fashion designer Monique Péan.
The scarf is listed as “made in the USA.” What the Obama store doesn’t tell you is that the scarf is made from imported hemp blend fabric made in China. Unfortunately the Obama administration has confused non-drug industrial hemp with marijuana and blocked American farmers from growing the crop. This outrageous policy has forced American companies to import hemp textiles, auto parts, building materials, nutritious foods and more from overseas increasing our trade deficit and offshoring farming and manufacturing jobs.
Complete article here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-steenstra/the-obama-reelection-camp_b_1684999.html
Author: Jeannie Herer
Medical Marijuana Rescheduling Lawsuit Moving
by Phillip Smith
A decade after the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis (CRC) filed its petition seeking to have marijuana moved from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, the federal courts will finally review the scientific evidence regarding the therapeutic efficacy of marijuana. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals announced late last week that it will hear oral arguments in October in a lawsuit filed by Americans for Safe Access (ASA) to force the government to act.
Complete article here: http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/2012/jul/30/medical_marijuana_rescheduling_l
Jack Herer Website Issues
Thank you everyone for your continued support and contributions to the JackHerer.com website. We recently have had a crash with the website and have been working to get all our old posts restored. Please bear with us for a few days while this gets sorted out. JackHerer.com is a volunteer effort that we are committed to keeping online and promote the awareness and messages shared by Jack. Happy 4/20 everyone!
Fill’er Up with Hemp Biodiesel
Hemp could be on the verge of joining the growing number of weeds that could power your car. Researchers at the University of Connecticut have found that industrial hemp seeds could make an ideal feedstock for biofuel production. Slight hitch: growing hemp, industrial or otherwise, is still illegal in the U.S. However, given that medical marijuana is rapidly approaching mainstream status and some states are relaxing marijuana-related laws, the chances for an industrial hemp comeback look a little brighter.
Biodiesel from Hemp
A couple of things about hemp make it ideal as a sustainable biofuel. First of all, industrial hemp is not a food crop. Second, it flourishes in sub-quality soil with a minimal amount of water or fertilizer. The UConn research team found that 97 percent of the virgin hemp seed oil they tested converted to biodiesel, and this high efficiency of conversion offers good potential for commercial production. The team also found that hemp seed biodiesel could be used at lower temperatures than other biodiesels currently in use.
Plenty of Room for Hemp Biodiesel
With hemp production barred here in the U.S., the researchers hope their findings will prove useful in other countries where hemp is grown, since in most cases the seeds are simply discarded. In any case, as mentioned above, chances are that the ban will eventually be lifted, not only because of relaxing cultural attitudes about hemp in general but also because the U.S. military is going heavily in for biofuels, with camelina biofuel for Air Force and Navy fighter planes leading the way.
Medical marijuana patients will be able to smoke openly at this year’s Cypress Hill Smokeout
Cypress Hill has made no bongs about where its allegiances lie. The venerable South Gate-raised rhymers have been teaching America how to get high and the right ways to do it, since Bush père owned the Oval Office. And since 1998, the group’s struck the match for the Cypress Hill Smokeout, along with Guerilla Union (the organization behind Paid Dues and Rock the Bells).
Following a hiatus, the festival returned last year with performances from a reunited Sublime (minus the late Bradley Nowell), Goodie Mob, the Geto Boys, Redman & Method Man, and Slipknot. This year’s event, slated for Oct. 16 at San Bernardino’s NOS Events Center, features headlining performances from Incubus, Manu Chao, Nas and Damian Marley, Erykah Badu and MGMT.
But perhaps the most interesting story about the festival’s latest incarnation is that it boasts a dedicated consumption area for medical marijuana patients. The fruits of an arrangement brokered between Guerilla Union and local municipal and law enforcement officials, the safe haven is the first known pact of its kind in Southern California concert history. In advance of the festival, Pop & Hiss spoke with Guerilla Union’s Chang Weisberg about how the deal went down.
What was the process behind persuading the local authorities to permit this sort of safe haven for medical marijuana cardholders?
It was a long one. We had to get the OK from the police department and the city of San Bernardino. None of them will endorse what we’re doing, or even say that they’re behind this. However, they took a major step by saying, ‘We’ll work with you, we’ll give you this opportunity and privilege.’ It stems from having succesfully executed Paid Dues, Rock the Bells and the Smokeout for over a decade.
But this is about more than just a place where people with medical marijuana cards can smoke marijuana freely. We have a medical marijuana expo where we promote activism, compassion and education. We believe that medical marijuna is the gateway to responsible tax-regulated consumption. Obviously, big alcohol, big medicine and big tobacco fan a lot of negative stereoytypes regarding cannabis.
How is this sort of arrangement going to work?
If you have a verified recomendation or card, you will be allowed to enter the venue and go to a specific area and smoke — provided that you’re over 18. We’re creating our own reality in allowing patients to exercise their rights. They’ll be able to smoke it and vaporize it, but I don’t think we’ll allow people to eat it. I don’t need the kind of press that the Electric Daisy received.
This sort of arrangement isn’t unprecedented. In Northern California, several concerts have done similar things and in the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum where the Oakland A’s play, you can smoke in a dedicated smoking area if you have your medical marijuana card. Eventually, we hope this is going to lead to people being able to walk into Wal-Mart or Rite-Aid and get their medicine, whether it will come in cigarette form, or salves, or lotions. Or better yet, to educate people to grow their personal amounts and save their money.
Have you faced opposition from anti-drug elements in the community?
Definitely. Every time we throw a show, there’s always going to be negative stereotypes that surround it. But we’ve worked with the authorities in a meaningful capacity for a long time. When you run an event for 40,000 people without riots or violence, you’re always dealing with narcotics and crash teams. Before our hiatus, there were local groups that called me the devil like they did to Ozzy Osbourne, but we weren’t exactly biting off bats’ heads or burning Bibles. From our perspective, we’re bringing in $4 to $5 million of revenues from the hotels that are booked to the traffic that businesses and gas stations receive.
The Inland Empire has the highest unemployment rate in Southern California. We’re trying to generate a positive commercial impact and bring positive energy. What we’re doing can have a positive effect, not just for medical marijuana advocates, but eventually for schools and colleges and the hotel bureau. We have a massive fiscal impact. I hate the cliche, but we put the heads in the beds.
Will you be giving any of the proceeds from the show to medical marijuana-related advocacy groups or to the forces in favor of passage of Prop. 19?
As we always do, we’re putting a $1 charity charge on the ticket. This time, it will be going to Americans for Safe Access, which is the largest medical marijuana group. As for Prop. 19, I believe that taxation is the way to go. However, if you talk to anyone well versed in medical marijuana, there are some flaws in the bill, so we haven’t officially taken a stance either way.
Do you think the Smokeout’s precedent will inspire other festivals to attempt to have medical marijuana consumption zones?
I definitely think it’s a step in the right direction. I’ve spoken to Paul Tollett at Goldenvoice about it. I’m not saying that next year, Coachella will have a consumption area, but I think that we’re going to tip the balance in that favor.
Will there be doctors on-site to make sure you’re covered in case of medical problems?
There will be doctors on-site so that nonpatients can potentially be authorized that day and for a nominal fee become patients. But we’ve always had that inside our medicial marijuana expo. However, not everyone will become a patient. We’re going to try to turn away as many people as we can, because the big man is watching us, as well they should. Narcotics officers will be in the building, but they won’t be threatening or rude. It’ll be done in the most positive manner possible.
Will it be perfect the first time? Probably not — but we have a stellar lineup and for the first time in their lives, thousands of people with medical marijuana cards will have to smoke without fear of hiding or going into the crowds. It’s going to be like the day you turned 21 and were able to buy a beer legally. It was only a big deal that day, but you certainly never forget it.
— Jeff Weiss
Photo: Cypress Hill performs at Lollapalooza 2010 in Chicago. Photo: Nam Y. Huh / Associated Press
If you have a verified recomendation or card, you will be allowed to enter the venue and go to a specific area and smoke — provided that you’re over 18. We’re creating our own reality in allowing patients to exercise their rights. They’ll be able to smoke it and vaporize it, but I don’t think we’ll allow people to eat it. I don’t need the kind of press that the Electric Daisy received.
This sort of arrangement isn’t unprecedented. In Northern California, several concerts have done similar things and in the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum where the Oakland A’s play, you can smoke in a dedicated smoking area if you have your medical marijuana card. Eventually, we hope this is going to lead to people being able to walk into Wal-Mart or Rite-Aid and get their medicine, whether it will come in cigarette form, or salves, or lotions. Or better yet, to educate people to grow their personal amounts and save their money.
Have you faced opposition from anti-drug elements in the community?
Definitely. Every time we throw a show, there’s always going to be negative stereotypes that surround it. But we’ve worked with the authorities in a meaningful capacity for a long time. When you run an event for 40,000 people without riots or violence, you’re always dealing with narcotics and crash teams. Before our hiatus, there were local groups that called me the devil like they did to Ozzy Osbourne, but we weren’t exactly biting off bats’ heads or burning Bibles. From our perspective, we’re bringing in $4 to $5 million of revenues from the hotels that are booked to the traffic that businesses and gas stations receive.
The Inland Empire has the highest unemployment rate in Southern California. We’re trying to generate a positive commercial impact and bring positive energy. What we’re doing can have a positive effect, not just for medical marijuana advocates, but eventually for schools and colleges and the hotel bureau. We have a massive fiscal impact. I hate the cliche, but we put the heads in the beds.
Will you be giving any of the proceeds from the show to medical marijuana-related advocacy groups or to the forces in favor of passage of Prop. 19?
As we always do, we’re putting a $1 charity charge on the ticket. This time, it will be going to Americans for Safe Access, which is the largest medical marijuana group. As for Prop. 19, I believe that taxation is the way to go. However, if you talk to anyone well versed in medical marijuana, there are some flaws in the bill, so we haven’t officially taken a stance either way.
Do you think the Smokeout’s precedent will inspire other festivals to attempt to have medical marijuana consumption zones?
I definitely think it’s a step in the right direction. I’ve spoken to Paul Tollett at Goldenvoice about it. I’m not saying that next year, Coachella will have a consumption area, but I think that we’re going to tip the balance in that favor.
Will there be doctors on-site to make sure you’re covered in case of medical problems?
There will be doctors on-site so that nonpatients can potentially be authorized that day and for a nominal fee become patients. But we’ve always had that inside our medicial marijuana expo. However, not everyone will become a patient. We’re going to try to turn away as many people as we can, because the big man is watching us, as well they should. Narcotics officers will be in the building, but they won’t be threatening or rude. It’ll be done in the most positive manner possible.
Will it be perfect the first time? Probably not — but we have a stellar lineup and for the first time in their lives, thousands of people with medical marijuana cards will have to smoke without fear of hiding or going into the crowds. It’s going to be like the day you turned 21 and were able to buy a beer legally. It was only a big deal that day, but you certainly never forget it.
— Jeff Weiss
Photo: Cypress Hill performs at Lollapalooza 2010 in Chicago. Photo: Nam Y. Huh / Associated Press
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2010/10/a-conversation-with-guerilla-union-founder-chang-weisberg-in-advance-of-the-cypress-hill-smokeout.html
‘Mayor Juana’
Peter Arth, mayor of Dunsmuir, California, doesn’t mind being called “Mayor Juana” for his highly visible advocacy of medical marijuana in the tiny Northern California town.
The mayor is aware he has become a lightning rod for a pot culture war in Siskiyou County that is being waged not in the forests or streets, but in the minds of local residents, reports Damian Mann of the Southern Oregon Mail Tribune.
Dunsmuir and Mount Shasta are the only two cities in the mostly rural county where medical marijuana dispensaries are allowed to operate. Elsewhere in the county, government leaders have banned pot shops in their communities.
Arth, 64, a retired lawyer from San Francisco, is facing a recall election next month on the same ballot where Prop 19, which would legalize an ounce or less of marijuana for all adults in California, will appear. Conservative residents are scandalized by his cannabis advocacy and his support for a rate increase for sewer and water to pay for infrastructure improvements in the town.
A local group, “Citizens For A Better Dunsmuir,” hopes to oust the pot-smoking mayor over his support for a medical marijuana garden downtown — across the street from the sheriff’s substation — to help promote tourism and provide safe, organic marijuana to patients.
“If the old expression, ‘I dipped my foot in the pool’ applies, the shark bit my foot off but I didn’t die,’ said Arth, who smokes two joints a day for anxiety and depression.
Chris Raine, a supporter of the recall move to get rid of Mayor Arth, claimed the mayor’s pot proposal has rightly drawn criticism and unwanted publicity.
“It’s going to cause him to get recalled this November,” said local business owner Raine.
The proposal to put a major marijuana garden in downtown Dunsmuir — even if it is on Arth’s own land — would turn off residents and potential new businesses in a town that is “mostly conservative,” Raine claimed.
“A lot of people don’t like marijuana in any shape or form,” Raine said.
Ironically, Raine, like many pot foes, seems spectacularly ignorant about the very substance he claims to be so concerned about. He claimed that most medical marijuana users “don’t treat it like a prescription.”
“The first puff is medicine, then everything else is just abuse,” claimed Raine, who seems to be one of those blowhards who has a few bucks, so he just went ahead and appointed himself a medical expert as well.
Arth, for his part, said Raine often goes to the extreme in his comments, sometimes likening the mayor’s support of medical marijuana to someone who is trying to kill children.
Mayor Arth said it is a little hypocritical that Raine — who has recently started selling beer and wine at his business, the Burger Barn, about a block from the proposed pot garden — is carrying on about marijuana when Raine himself sells a much harsher drug, alcohol.
Instead of supporting his idea to boost tourism, Mayor Arth said, Raine and others seem content to leave half the town’s storefronts empty.
“If this community doesn’t do something soon to make itself attractive to businesses and visitors, the town is going to die,” Arth said.
According to Arth, Dunsmuir could create a brand name for locally grown, organic marijuana that would enhance tourism, drawing people from Southern Oregon and other areas.
Arth does have other reasons for creating a crop that is locally overseen from start to finish.
“I want to be able to control the quality of stuff I put in my body,” Arth said.
The mayor adds that he’s not had much success growing his own pot on the balcony of his downtown business.
Meanwhile, “Mayor Juana” appears to take his reputation and stoney nickname in stride.
“If you were doing a documentary, you couldn’t ask for a better petri dish than Dunsmuir,” the mayor said.
New Jersey Medical Marijuana is outrageous
By Steve Elliott
The New Jersey Health Department on Wednesday night released 97 pages of rules for what patients, advocates and lawmakers are describing as one of the most restrictive medical marijuana programs in the country.
In an extreme bonehead move, the state limited the potency of cannabis to just 10 percent THC, according to the rules. This means that New Jersey medical marijuana patients must deal with marijuana that is only half the potency of top-shelf medical cannabis in other states.
Patients must have one of nine diseases or conditions, and their authorizing doctors must have been treating them for at least a year or have seen them four times, and be willing to certify that traditional forms of relief have failed, reports Susan K. Livio of NJ.com.
Once patients pass the scrutiny of a state-appointed “review panel” — who knows what that might entail, given the other rules — they can go to one of four state-licensed dispensaries or get cannabis delivered to their homes, according to the state Department of Health and Senior Services.
Application and renewal fees are either $20 or $200, depending on patients’ income levels. Patients can choose how they take their medication — either by smoking, taking an enhanced cannabis lozenge or applying a topical lotion containing the active ingredients in marijuana, according to the rules.
Patients can get up to two ounces of marijuana per month from their dispensaries, also called “alternative treatment centers.”
The Health Department will select just two growers to supply four nonprofit dispensaries, a departure from the law enacted by the Legislature in January. The law had called for a minimum of six nonprofit centers to both grow and sell marijuana.
Prospective dispensary operators must pay $20,000 to apply for a treatment center license, although they will get back $18,000 if they are rejected. Annual renewal fees are also $20,000.
Entrepreneurs who want to compete to be either one of the two growers, or one of the four sellers, will be able to obtain applications next week, according to Health Department press release.
 |
| John Munson/The Star-Ledger |
| N.J. Health Commissioner Poonam Alaigh: “We have designed a clinically sound program that is unique to New Jersey” |
“We have designed a clinically sound program that is unique to New Jersey,” said Health Commissioner Poonam Alaigh.
“It is a physician-driven program that provides access to qualified patients for whom conventional treatment has failed and who may benefit from medical marijuana as a symptom reliever. The program is also designed to ensure that patients receive ongoing medical care from a physician.”
No patients are expected to be able to get medical marijuana before the summer of 2011, according to the rules on the department’s website.
Patients will be allowed to start applying next month.
 |
| Photo: Drug Policy Alliance |
| Roseanne Scotti, Drug Policy Alliance of N.J.: “Overall, it seems the goal of the regulations it to provide the least amount of relief to the fewest number of patients” |
A patient advocate called the new rules “disappointing.”
“Overall, it seems the goal of the regulations to provide the least amount of relief to the fewest number of patients,” said Roseanne Scotti of the Drug Policy Alliance of New Jersey.
“This wasn’t what was foreseen by advocates,” Scotti said. “We already had the strictest law in the country; I didn’t think it could get any worse.
The restrictive rules also upset Sen. Nicholas Scutari (D-Union), a primary sponsor of the law, who said he will expect them to be changed to reflect the legislation then-Gov. Jon Corzine signed in January.
Gov. Chris Christie got permission to delay the law by three months, claiming he needed more time to write the rules and create a program that could not be “exploited,” as he claimed the laws in other states had been.
A staff of at least four state employees will review patient records and written doctor authorizations.
The state will issue photo IDs to approved patients, bearing their names, addresses, and birth dates, as well as the name of a “primary caregiver” who has undergone a background check and is permitted to obtain cannabis on the patient’s behalf if necessary.
The rules will be printed in the New Jersey Register, a biweekly government publication, and a public hearing will follow.
US Federal judge arrested on drug & weapon charges
Atlanta – A Georgia judge was arrested last Friday by the FBI in an undercover sting operation, and now faces weapons and drug charges.
67 year old senior U.S. District Court Judge Jack T. Camp was arrested last Friday in an undercover sting operation, and was released on Monday. Hailing from Georgia, Camp was arrested after he allegedly bought cocaine, marijuana and other illicit drugs reported the New York Times.
MSNBC broke the news last week, and have posted a copy of the FBI’s complaint and affidavit against the judge that resulted in Camp’s arrest. The complaint was sworn by a special agent for the FBI and states Camp tried to buy drugs, and also had cocaine, marijuana and roxycodone in his possession. He also allegedly had in his possession illegal firearms. In the FBI’s affidavit detailing the particular allegations behind Camp’s arrest, the anonymous stripper claims she and Camp did drugs together.
MSN reported that Camp’s lawyer, Bill Morrison, said the case had nothing to do with Camp’s position as a judge and everything to do with his marriage. At Camp’s arraignment Monday, Morrison said Camp would plead not guilty. However, as USA Today reported, a hearing might be difficult to obtain. A judge had to be brought in from Alabama for Camp’s arraignment.
Morrison told media that Camp would most probably take a leave of absence from his job as a judge until the charges were resolved.
USA Today said Camp had been caught when buying drugs from an undercover officer who was posing as a drug dealer. Camp allegedly had two guns with him when he made the drug deal.
Camp was nominated to the District Court by Reagan in 1987, and after the senate approved his appointment, he began his commission in 1988. He became a senior judge in 2008.
The allegations say that Camp had formed a relationship with an Atlanta stripper, paying her for sex and purchased illegal drugs from her. She turned into an informant earlier this year, and the FBI began tailing Camp and also tapped his phone. The Times-Herald said Camp
“… faces four drug-related charges and one count of possessing firearms while illegally using drugs.”
The judge and the stripper were together when purchasing drugs from the undercover FBI, reported the Atlantic Journal-Constitution.
According to an article posted at Law, reproduced from the Fulton County Daily Report, Camp’s wife and children attended Monday’s arraignment hearing.
Reefer Revolution
It’s a scorching late afternoon in mid-July. Strolling on the sidewalk along the west side of Flamingo Park in South Beach, Eric Stevens approaches a man holding his toddler son by the hand. The blond-haired, blue-eyed University of Miami business school graduate asks the father if he is a registered voter in Miami Beach. The man, whose name is Charlie, replies in the affirmative. “I was wondering if you would sign a petition that would allow Miami Beach police officers to issue a citation to anyone caught with 20 grams or less of marijuana instead of putting them in jail,” Stevens says. The dad doesn’t hesitate: “Where do I sign?”
Stevens then walks over to a thin, young man named Adrian, who’s wearing a tank top and gym shorts and leaning against a pole holding a basketball hoop. “A $100 fine instead of jail?” Adrian remarks. “That’s cool, man.” Over the course of three hours, Stevens collects two dozen signatures from registered Miami Beach voters for a petition that would decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana.
The 23-year-old Foxboro, Massachusetts, native forms half of the brain trust behind Sensible Florida, a group that earlier this year initiated a petition drive in Jacksonville that stalled before coming to South Florida to make a go of it. His counterpart is Ford Bannister, a 27-year-old who helped push medical marijuana referendums in Denver, where it is now legal. As of this past September 6, Sensible Florida has collected 2,402 signatures from registered voters in Miami Beach. Stevens and Bannister need to get another 1,800 John Hancocks to hold a special election that would let Beach residents make their city the first in Florida to legalize small amounts of reefer.
“Billions of dollars have been spent on the drug war to put countless people in jail and ruin their lives,” Stevens reasons as a brunet unloading her Mini Cooper signs the petition. “But it just seems impossible to me that anyone can stop a plant from growing anywhere in the world.”
Stevens’ path to pro-marijuana activist began last summer when he was taking an entrepreneurial class during his junior year. “I was a naval sea cadet in high school and a straight-A student,” he says. “I always thought marijuana was bad for you until I realized fellow classmates who were much smarter than me smoked pot and still excelled.”
So for his class, he developed a business plan advocating for medical marijuana dispensaries in Florida, which won him a $2,500 endowment from the university’s business school to further study his proposal. “Florida is an agricultural state,” he says. “And marijuana is the number-one cash crop in the country, so it seemed pretty logical to me.”
Stevens used the money to cover travel expenses to California, the first state to legalize medical marijuana, where he visited dispensaries and Oaksterdam University in Oakland. There, he took advanced classes on the business of government-regulated pot selling. He also familiarized himself with the federal government’s hypocrisy on marijuana. “I found out that the government has a patent on THC [the primary intoxicant in pot] to make marinol for medicinal purposes,” he says. “Yet the same government classifies marijuana as a Schedule I drug, meaning that it has no medicinal value.”
After his trip out West, Stevens returned home to Foxboro, where he volunteered on the ballot initiative that last year made medical marijuana legal in Massachusetts. After graduating in May, he joined Bannister to bring the reefer revolution to the Sunshine State.
“I’ve always been entrepreneurial,” Stevens notes. “I saw a huge demand but a low supply for a safe product with significant medical benefits. Many of the arguments for keeping marijuana illegal just don’t have any substance.”
Medical marijuana: Taking a legal toke
Irvin Rosenfeld is a hero to any sick person who has ever felt the positive, ultrahealing vibes marijuana has on the body. When he was 10 years old, Rosenfeld was diagnosed with a genetic disease that causes tumors to grow at the ends of the long bones in his body. That’s why doctors had him doped up all the time.
“I was taking all kinds of prescription narcotics as a kid,” the Virginia native recalls. “I had morphine and Azolam. You name it, I had it. But I was totally against illegal drugs. I used to speak to high school kids about the perils of doing illicit substances.”
Michael McElroy
The federal government deals weed to Irvin Rosenfeld.
So what’s he up to now? It’s shortly before 11 a.m. on a muggy July day, and he’s sitting behind his desk at Fort Lauderdale’s New Bridge Securities, where he is senior vice president of the stock-trading firm. His boss is cool with him smoking the green. On the job! And he can’t be busted!
Rosenfeld says he came to the illuminating realization pot was good for him his senior year in high school. In 1971, his doctor told him warm weather would do him good, so the then-19-year-old cruised down to South Florida and rented a pad at Sunset Apartments on Galloway Road in South Miami. By then, the southern part of the Sunshine State was a freewheeling doper’s paradise. “Most of my neighbors were college students,” he says. “And many of them would be drinking alcohol and smoking pot.”
Naturally, Rosenfeld’s anti-illegal-drug stance made him a buzz-kill. He’d decline invites to smoke grass with neighbors. “After 30 days of saying no, I wasn’t making any friends,” he says. “So one day, I relented and gave it a try.”
Rosenfeld claims he didn’t get high, but something more remarkable took place, something similar to that scene in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey when the apes wake up to the black monolith and just go bananas. Um, not exactly like that, but it was one of those epiphanic moments that make us humans realize we are very special beings who have the capacity to rationalize and conclude that, hey, smoking some reefer could, like, save our lives. Well, that’s what happened to Rosenfeld.
“I couldn’t sit in one place for more than ten minutes due to the pain caused by my disease,” he continues. “After I took my first hit, I played chess for close to 30 minutes. I didn’t feel any discomfort.”
Being a smart fellow, Rosenfeld studied the history of marijuana. He discovered the drug had been legal in the States from 1860 to 1937, primarily for the treatment of pain. “I began using marijuana off and on to test its effects,” he says. “I reduced my use of heavy narcotics as well.”
A year later, he dropped out of school and returned to Virginia, where he embarked on a mission: He would make the case before the federal government that he should be allowed to have his grass. So with the help of his primary physician, Rosenfeld argued before a panel of 20 doctors assigned by the Food and Drug Administration to hear cases from individuals seeking approval to use marijuana for medical purposes.
It worked. In 1982, Rosenfeld became one of two people in the entire country to get the federal government’s OK to use marijuana. The number grew to nearly 30 until George H. W. Bush’s administration shut down the medical marijuana program in the early ’90s.
Luckily, Rosenfeld and the original dozen patients were grandfathered in and still get their pot from a farm run by the feds at the University of Mississippi. Yeah, the feds grow grass. So every 25 days, he picks up his prescription of approximately 300 marijuana joints in a metal tin.
“I have not had morphine in 20 years,” he says triumphantly. “Smoking marijuana has kept my tumors from growing. I have not had a tumor grow in 30 years. I attribute it to cannabis.”
So now he’s on the pro-medical-marijuana speaking circuit. He recently traveled to Oregon, where he spoke on a panel that included Robert Platshorn, the man who served the longest prison stint in U.S. history (29 years) for marijuana trafficking. “Marijuana is a fantastic medicine,” Rosenfeld says. “Doctors should be allowed to prescribe it nationwide.”
Rosenfeld will toke up right in front of your face. In fact, he tokes every day at work in the parking lot. And his office is in the same building as the Drug Enforcement Administration. Not even the agents inside the complex can mess with him. Cuhrazy, brah!
At 11:15 a.m., he is on one of his four smoke breaks. He reaches into the right breast pocket of his blue short-sleeve dress shirt and pulls out a clear plastic bag containing several joints. He grabs one, places it on his lips, and ignites it. As he takes the first drag, a pungent odor confirms he has just lit a fat Marley. Anybody else would have to hot-box inside his car to sneak a toke.
“When people think of a marijuana smoker, they conjure up images of some hippie pothead,” Rosenfeld says. “They don’t imagine a guy in a suit and tie with a career.”
As he takes his drags, we wonder what government weed smokes like.